Fat Black & Ugly

(I posted this on my tumblr, http://hiphopcheerleader.tumblr.com/)

Let me start this off by saying that I'm not very familiar with Tumblr. I've been active on here for a couple of months but I'm not Tumblr famous or anything. I still can't figure out how to reply to people's replies and I don't really do any serious writing on here. The times that I do write, my posts never get as many notes as I feel they deserve. Lol.

But I'm writing here today to address something that I've noticed. The lack of blackness in the Tumblr fat community.

Now, I should also say. I'm coming from a place of thin privilege over here. Therefore, I use the word fat, not as a reclamation but as the word that is usually meant to mean overweight, obese, and/or overall "thick." Also, I want to make it clear that I am not in the position to speak for anyone, I know the fat, black community is in a perfectly capable position to speak for themselves. I am speaking (in solidarity, I hope) as a black woman who is permanently outside of white standards of beauty. That said, direct me, if you please, to any posts on this subject made by fat black womyn.

First, I want to make this clear for anyone whose forgotten.: White people who are fat, still have white privilege. I'm not sure why this is so difficult to understand but intersectionality folks. Intersectionality. Just because you are oppressed in some ways in your life, doesn't erase your position as a privileged white individual. For example, I am able bodied, meaning I have privilege over a black-disabled person. The fact that I'm black doesn't mean I can disregard the fact that I am able bodied.

What I've noticed is that the fat, white community on Tumblr has a problem with this fact. Why am I not surprised? Because its typical white people shit. Mu'fuckas just don't want to acknowledge their privilege. Following a few fat blogs, I see about 20 times the number of posts on the beauty of white fat womyn than I do for fat black womyn. I guess these fat white womyn feel they are rejecting the beauty myth but by leaving out womyn of color they are only reinforcing it. Remember the time a fat white woman compared her being fat to the struggle of a black woman goes through? Only one fail from the white, fat tumblr community. Another fail was when the woman who creates "ugly" graphics used a black woman in one with a banner across it stating "ugly don't care." Or the gif with the white woman from glee singing TLC's Unpretty, she wasn't fat & neither are TLC but still showed that y'all don't get it. Or the picture with all the white womyn with "real" bodies trying to show bodily diversity but didn't think to include any womyn of color. this is all just another reason & facet to why white feminists fail at developing full analyses, they stop at where their privilege meets & leave womyn of color out for the 5011th time. your whiteness doesn't erase shit. you're still white. fat white womyn are concerned by how well they fit into the perfect white beauty myth & black womyn are concerned that we are constantly judged by how well we fit into that myth, no matter how hard we try to fit in, our attempts are futile.

Here's where I get into the difference between being a fat black woman & a fat white woman: a fat black woman could so much more accurately talk about this than I can but here goes: fat tumblr has a white face. why am i not surprised? because its typical white shit. to exclude womyn of color voices & in the case of beauty politics, particularly, black womyn. the rhetoric still exists: black womyn are not really womyn & we're not even really human. our beauty politics don't matter because we're so far gone from ever being beautiful, trying to include us is a worthless, waste of time. white fat womyn on tumblr seem to be reclaiming their fatness in an effort to say "I am still a white woman! i am still apart of the beautiful people club! stop thinking my body is ugly! accept me!" they seem to be trying to (i don't want to assume anyone's motives) reclaim their stake in beautiful white womanhood because its been taken away from them due to their fatness. But black womyn don't have that privilege. Fat is seen as something that can be changed. This is why people tell fat people to lose weight. they just tell black womyn to die. The belief is that if fat white womyn just lose weight, then they can go back to being in the beautiful club. White womyn are still within the realm of attainable beauty. Black womyn are not. Skin color cannot be changed, its permanent. beauty is constructed. & its constructed against black womyn. black fat womyn get treated harsher (a fat black woman would do better in coming up with specific examples) than white fat womyn because of their ugly, permanent, unfortunate blackness. race compounds the fat plight. its seen as a continual, permanent ugliness. white womyn are seen as just being temporary deviants. if you lose weight you can come back to our exclusive white woman pretty club. but you black fat bitches are out forever because then we'd have nothing to measure ourselves up against.

the end.

*drops mic*

Interracial Dating: Are We Still Having A Problem With This?: Updated

Today I read this post on YBF on Jill Scott's views on interracial dating. I then, as usual, took to Twitter to have a discussion with my followers on the topic. I thought Jill added a great perspective to why black women might have a problem with black men dating interracially or why women of color have a problem when men of color date white women. She added a perspective I had never thought of before.

Race operates in a black/white binary, with white, along with everything associated with whiteness, being placed in the upper echelons of society and black, along with everything associated with blackness, being placed in the lowest echelon of society. I believe that black self-hate is motivation for the reason that a lot of people get upset when others date outside their race. When society tells you that you're ugly, stupid, and undesirable and that white women are more worthy of protection, more beautiful, more loyal, and smarter, and then you see a black man marry a white woman, its easy to see that as a small confirmation of that skewed self-perception. Also, I think, the real problem arises when both black men and black women designate who they will or won't date based solely on their race. For example, "I don't date black women." or "I don't date outside my race." When a black man completely rules out dating other black people, it obviously reflects on how he feels about his belonging to that race and the race in general.

White is seen as the pinnacle of society. In America, everything that is white is pure, good, and downright better than everything else, especially anything black. White is able to attain everything, black is able to attain nothing. When a black woman sees a black man dating a white woman, its a sense of "them" attaining another thing that should belong to us. It almost as if nothing is untouchable by the white race. Black women generally feel betrayed when a black man dates a white woman. We feel that black men's loyalty should be expressed through the dating of only black women. However, how much does this type of "loyalty" really benefit the black race? Its heteronormative to ask black men to only date within their race so that we can "preserve the black family" and it also reinforces the detrimental concept of race itself. Can someone give me one good reason for why we should only date inside drawn our racial lines? The "black family" has been destroyed since slavery times and I wonder if it ever really existed? Isn't the nuclear family a white ideal? I'm all for building up the black community through economically "buying black, supporting black political leaders, creating black sub-cultures, and the preservation and knowledge of black culture, etc. which are all profitable and beneficial ways to support us, however, I fail to see a real reason how racial dating loyalty benefits the black community in any real ways. I'm sick of hearing black women ask why there aren't black men available, or why black men find other races desirable or why there aren't more black relationships. Its old.

Generally, I think people are way too obsessed with relationships for some reason. Jealousy and unneccessry criticism from intruders always surround relationships for absolutely no reason. That's why its best to keep personal relationship business to yourself if you are in one. I think the ultimate solution is to love yourself and love who you are and where you come from.

A Picture is Worth... Part 2

So I've had a couple of discussions about this shit right here and I have also read a couple of commentaries on it as well. I just want to know what do yall think this picture is saying?

Again, we need to be critical about the images that are fed to us by people like Mr. West and Lady GaGa. These are two huge celebrities right now, we buy into their images constantly. When a star is presented to their public, they are not just presenting to us their music, they are presenting their way of thinking, their personality, their style and their mistakes. People like Kanye and Lady GaGa are influencers on our generation, pop culture, our world and our society. When we start to think about images such as this, not as what are they trying to sell us but how are they trying to sell it to us, that's when we can start to hold the images we see in the media accountable. In this image, we see a female body, that falls into what a typical acceptable body looks like in mass white culture. We also see a black man, who obviously falls into the background of this image and is used to contrast Lady GaGa's overly white body. Seemingly, she is being saved from some sort of evil. In the context of feminism, the last thing we need is another woman being saved, especially by a man. However, in the context of feminism and race, the last thing we need is a white woman being saved by a ignorant, blinded by love, man-monster, which Kanye is in this picture. This picture enforces the myth of black bodies for sacrifice of the white dream. Kanye is unimportant, Lady GaGa is the perfect, innocent, white woman.